A few neglected things in Give me your soul

In an effort to keep the last several entries somewhat short I cut a few events out so I'll put them down now.

Theatrelink - a well meaning but soul-crushing project we were forced to participate in for three years. Paschal really believed in it and it seemed fun on the surface...you put three schools together from across the country and each class writes a short play (our first year it was actually a musical) which they submit to one of the other two schools for a few weeks of critique and rewrites until they ultimately stage it, record it, and send it to the other schools. That first year was horrible. We loved our little musical and put a good deal of effort into it and the school we sent it to could not tear it down enough. They were very cruel about it, too, taking to attacking us directly and they never got scolded for doing so. Meanwhile, the script we got was a disgusting mockery of Californians ripe with every stereotype they could think of. Naturally, when we tried to bring up our issues with that, we were slapped down for being petty. The school we sent ours to could not stop ripping it apart, forcing rewrites on us right up until the end.

The second year was...unevenful? I can't really remember much about it. We just did some paint-by-numbers drama complete with tragic death.

It was my senior year we turned it around. At the risk of sounding full of myself, I think I get a good chunk of the credit for that. It started off bad, we had a pretty bad argument about what themes we wanted to build our script around. Paschal got all pissed off and stormed out of the room like a child. As soon as she was gone we all felt much better, though. We tossed around some humorous theme ideas, someone suggested pirates as a theme and that just gave me an idea. I took a minute to plan out the plot in my mind before pitching it and everybody liked it. We pitched it to Paschal and she liked it. So we started writing Of Rats and Pirates. Ultimately, I ended up writing the majority of it...I was happy to, it was my baby. This allowed the rest of the class to just hang out, lying on the outdoor stage and enjoying the sun. Even more miraculously, the school we sent it to loved it. The characters gave them some problems seeing as they only had one guy in their class but they loved playing pirates anyway. (Side note, this happened well before the Pirates of the Caribbean movies so we weren't just jumping on pirate fever). I count that as one of my few successful forays into writing.

Electrocution - My junior year I ran the backstage light board for the dance show. We called it The Beast since it was a huge, ancient bastard. The main power switch needed a great deal of effort to push up. Most of the time we squatted under it and pushed up with our legs. Overly macho people would go through the extra effort of pulling it up. Anywho, the dance teacher wanted a ridiculously elaborate lighting design that we couldn't really handle...we had to make a risky decision to switch plugs around in order to use all the channels we had. Seeing as how I was backstage guy I got the honor of pulling out frayed plugs and juggling them around. During one instance the back of house light board operate told me I was clear to pull (in other words the the lights on that channel were off) but they very much weren't and I got a big old shocktrocution. My left arm was numb for around half an hour. Even better than that? A bout ten minutes after that I started to smell burning. When we got to intermission the stage manager came to check on it and we found out that a couple plugs had melted from the surge and were pretty close to starting a fire. Paschal struck hard on that one, got the school to spend some money to upgrade our lighting system to a beautiful computerized one.

To this day I'm bitter they didn't name it the "Brian (Last name redacted) Memorial Lighting System".

Near death - I've had two near death experiences in my life (and I've exaggerated the previous story so it seems more deadly). The first when I was around 10? I used to go to a winter camp for the YMCA in the mountains. It was one of the few times in my childhood I got to see snow. One of the times up there we went hiking up a nice mountain trail and we stopped for a rest. There was a big old boulder near the cliff where we stopped and so, naturally, a bunch of us climbed all over it. It was covered with a lovely layer of ice on top and we peered over the side of the cliff. There was a smaller ledge about 2 stories down with a big flat rock and a whole lot of small jagged ones around it...super dangerous. As we moved away from the edge we remarked how, if you fell off the cliff, you'd die for sure. So, of course, I did. Slipped backwards and went right over the edge. Only one kid noticed. Guess I don't scream when I plunge to my death. I landed on my back on the flat rock. I remember looking up and seeing that kid looking over the edge...not trying to alert anyone that I fell. I got up slowly because I figured I broke something for sure. But I didn't. I was sore as hell for a good while but I found my way back up to the group.

The other time was only a few years back. I have a tendency to pop migraine strength aspirin at least daily. For a while I would toss back 4 at a time...twice the recommended daily dosage in case you don't know. Also, since I did it so often I would lose track of when I took it. So, one day, I took a double dose and about half an hour later my roommate at the time offered to share some pot with me. I hadn't smoked in years but figured why not? Because those two things don't mix well. I'm almost certain my heart stopped for a few seconds. I collapsed in the kitchen hallway on my way to the bathroom. My extremities were numb, my heart was beating so slowly, it was hard to breath, my vision was going white. Then there was nothing. Then the sound of Ryan screaming shot through and I came around. For months afterwards I kept having moments where I would experience shortness of breath, numbing, weird heart palpitations. I get the occasional flutter, still, but otherwise it doesn't happen anymore.

So yay, a few fun tidbits from high school and two from outside high school. Stop lying about the shock, Brian, that's sad.